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Downton Abbey Season 4 Q&A and a mini-rant

So, as any semi-regular reader of this blog knows, I'm a bit obsessed with Downton Abbey. The fourth season is going to begin airing in the U.S. starting January 5th on PBS. The cast have been out and about on American TV. I was settling in to watch the PBS Q&A. Pretty interesting stuff. The cast are pros at not spoiling things, so it's safe to watch.You can watch it here:

Then I scrolled down to the comments. Few good things come out of YouTube or Yahoo comments (unlike on this blog, where clearly, comments are the Best Thing Ever), I've noticed.

You see, it's been mentioned that there's a new character (and I can confirm he's a lovely man) named Jack Ross, an African-American jazz singer, who meets and interacts with the Crawley family on Downton this upcoming season. I talked a little about him here.

But anyway, in the comments below the Q&A, you'll notice someone complaining about "Why does this show need to show interracial dating? They didn't do that back then! I watch this show so I don't have to watch modern-day issues."

And reading that reminded me of one of the many reasons why I'm writing and am determined to finish The Sailor's Daughters aka The Keegan Inheritance. Because we need more historical fiction (and, frankly, more fiction, period) depicting people of color and of particular interest to me, being biracial, we need more historical fiction and fiction period depicting people of different races interacting---whether the interaction is negative, friendly, romantic, in trade, in war. 'Cause guess what? It's been happening since the dawn of time! This isn't new, people!

I feel like I've ranted about this kind of thing, too. Oh, I have: Too modern? That whole post is about storylines in historical fiction dramas that people find "too modern."

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